


The key to any successful relationship (is to prevent your partner from being carried away by a large bird)

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Series: my worst decisions are ahead of me [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: ASL Being Idiots, ASL Brothers, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: In which a large flaming bird flies off with Luffy and sends canon off the rails because Overlook decided to yeet a small child.(Written forIn Memoriam: Ace)
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy & Portgas D. Ace & Sabo
Series: my worst decisions are ahead of me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658761
Comments: 17
Kudos: 245
Collections: In Memoriam: A Portgas D. Ace Collection





	The key to any successful relationship (is to prevent your partner from being carried away by a large bird)

**Author's Note:**

> I attempted to write something Ace-centric and canon-compliant for [In Memoriam: Ace](https://in-memoriam-one-piece.tumblr.com/), an event that's in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Ace's death's chapter coming out, and ended up with this instead.

Marco really hadn’t set out to do _that_ much. He mostly was just trying to get a chance to stretch his wings and get a break from running the Moby Dick—as much as he loved his ersatz family, he sometimes needed a Calm Belt and/or Red Line’s worth of space. This time, he’d chosen to go fly around the East Blue for a while, and…

In his defense what _usually_ happens when a small child goes flying through the air at heights that many birds can’t reach is something between a splat and a splash, with blood and gore everywhere. Whitebeard’s crew wasn’t the place for the kind of pirates who’d _like_ that sort of thing, which meant catching the kid was pretty much automatic. 

So, too, was putting a decent amount of distance between where the kid was from and them before landing, which in this case meant a different island. The kid, at least, had thankfully very quickly switched from considering him edible to being thrilled by the view of mostly water. Marco wasn’t too certain of his age—it was always a bit hard to tell when they were between toddling and puberty’s growth spurt—but it seemed like he was on the younger end, and he could be forgiven for not suspecting that the kid was a Devil Fruit user from how fascinated the kid was by the ocean as they flew over it.

When he landed, though, and the kid _bounced_ a little when dropped to the ground…

Marco did not _quite_ regret anything. He knew his trajectories. Even if the kid apparently _could_ have possibly survived the kind of fall he had been in for—he also was going to be missing solid land by a good distance. Drowning was _not_ an improvement.

Meanwhile, in Goa, there were multiple people panicking for _many_ different kinds of good reasons…and also some very, very stupid ones. After all, flaming birds large enough to snatch a small child—even one who was admittedly already in the air—were rare. Some of the guards Outlook had brought with him even had some inkling what a phoenix was.

It likely said many things about the kind of place Goa was that nobody there would have recognized any of the more famous pirates and criminals if they had opted to visit the city-state and put even a merely token effort into remaining incognito. Even the guards rarely spared a glance for any wanted poster, even ones for criminals who were mostly active in the East Blue.

So, as a result, there was no thought at all that Marco the Phoenix, a New World pirate who was considered by many strong enough that he could become an Emperor in his own right if he ever chose to stop following Whitebeard, had just snatched out of the air the hostage who’d been flung as more useful as a demonstration than alive.

In the New World, it would have been very well-understood exactly how big a mistake one had made as Marco would have been recognized and it was _known_ that Whitebeard—for whatever reason—was rather fond of small children and took offense to people who went out of their way to harm them. Nobody in the New World was quite going to forget how he took discovering that Amanecer’s army was dealing with their overabundance of street kids via enslavement and mass murder, even if most didn’t know about what happened _beyond_ “Whitebeard likes kids.”

It was probably for the best, all things considered, that Marco was in the East Blue simply to get a bit of a vacation and _not_ because Whitebeard had decided for whatever reason to leave the Grand Line for a bit.

This didn’t really make up for Outlook panicking because he’d wanted his hostage to hit the ground, not get flown off with, but still, it probably did avoid what would have ended up a very awkward sequence of incidents.

At least Luffy’s older brothers were smarter in their choice of reasons to panic, and it did at least give them an opening to run.

Ace, somewhat naturally, opted for trying to chase the bird.

Sabo defaulted for chasing Ace.

Eventually, somewhat naturally, a ship got stolen.

After Ace had tried to run on water, though…

Marco was not sure how he felt about this island. It was, admittedly, in a reasonably straight line from Goa. That ought to make it somewhat easier for Luffy’s brothers to find it, even if it did mean that it’d also be easier for Garp to find on the off chance that he actually _was_ paying some attention to his grandsons—which was possible, though Marco doubted it. Garp had, after all, opted to leave Amanecer with a boatload’s worth of seaman recruits, some of whom were younger than Luffy seemed to be. It would have been easy enough to lose a child or a dozen more within that group, and…if it had been anybody _other_ than Garp the Fist, Marco would have wondered why he _hadn’t_ mixed his grandsons in.

With Garp? The most likely answer was that he hadn’t even thought of it.

At least the island had actually had something that he didn’t feel too bad about kicking, and he rather hoped Jimbe forgave him for beating up these fishmen for him. As it was, he’d ended up with a _second_ accidentally acquired child, this time with a Jolly Roger already tattooed on her, which was made for multiple problems. There hadn’t been any _confirmation_ , quite, on just what the World Government did with those women pirates whom they caught who simply…vanished, but there was enough evidence that just leaving the girl was not something Marco was willing to do even _if_ the East Blue had a quiet reputation for the _least_ corrupt Marine bases. That just meant that if they got word from Marineford to ship her on in, they’d likely not even think twice about it.

And Marco had seen her maps. If she really didn’t want to stay a pirate…dumping her with Vice Admiral Tsuru with some examples of her work and a well-staged ‘escape’ _should_ give her some protection. If she was willing to let herself be recruited by Tsuru, anyway.

Marco was _reasonably_ certain he’d be able to keep Luffy from trying to keep her. They had seastone cuffs on the Moby.

It had taken less than an hour for Ace to completely convince Sabo that, in fact, he did _not_ want to be the captain and he _entirely_ wanted to be Ace’s first mate.

He was only embarrassed by not having realized before they had set sail just how utterly and completely hopeless with navigation Ace was. He knew his left from his right, and he could definitely find his way around when he knew the territory, but…

That did _not_ translate into being able to competently identify the direction one wanted to sail in and read maritime maps. Sabo was completely and totally aware that he _should_ have known better than to assume it would, too. But he very much liked his brothers alive, thank you very much, and now… _Now_ he knew that Ace was probably going to die if he was allowed to sail off on his own. He’d probably do something astoundingly stupid like get himself stuck on Sixis and die, if left to his own devices.

It helped that he _already_ knew how bad Ace was at writing anything down, and at reading. He’d tried to teach him. He really, really had.

It took over a week for Ace and Sabo to finally reach Cocoyashi, _despite_ the bird having thoughtfully left a nice _straight_ trail for them. With, after the first couple days, helpful signs. Sabo wasn’t asking how, exactly, a large flaming bird managed to hand-letter signs and, thankfully, several were very clearly ( _mostly_ ) Luffy’s work.

Ace had _not_ noticed that it was _also_ a straight line, more or less, from Dawn Island, and a much shorter journey—especially as the bird flies. Sabo had noticed, but was _very_ carefully not saying anything.

Ace had been angry enough about the signs as it was, even when it was clear to both of them that Luffy had written them. He’d probably be happier when he finally found Luffy and the large fire chicken, and kicked the bird’s tail for kidnapping their baby brother and everything else.

It was probably good, then, that the signs helped them _find_ the bird, who was currently relaxing on a roof and watching Luffy play with a redhead. What wasn’t good, in Sabo’s opinion, was that Ace ignored the latter in favor of attacking the bird.

The bird casually took off, staying just close enough to watch Ace as he yelled at it to come and fight him like a man. Luffy, it seemed, shared the bird’s clear amusement, though the redhead’s sigh was something Sabo could definitely sympathize with.

Where had Ace learned most of those words, anyway?

Wait, no, Sabo had his guesses and didn’t want to know after all.

Ace did get what he wanted, though, as the bird did eventually drop down to within his reach…after Ace started repeating himself.

And then transformed partially into a human so he could kick Ace _off_ the roof.

Well. At least that explained the signs.

Marco settled down to wait for the angry kid to wake up from his latest loss. The rubber kid’s hat was familiar, but not as familiar as the angry kid felt. He wasn’t _quite_ going to ask the kid if he knew who his father was, mostly because he didn’t think he’d actually get an answer right now, but… Anybody who’d actually been around Gol D. Roger when he was angry would have no trouble recognizing his son.

Of course, it hadn’t hurt there that the kid had definitely gotten Conqueror’s Haki, though a kid in the East Blue having awakened it was as much of a bad sign as a girl with a roger already tattooed on her.

Marco wasn’t sure if he was going to encourage or discourage the nesting instinct jokes he already knew he was going to be hearing once he shepherded this bunch of kids back, but half of them he already knew couldn’t just be left here safely, while the other half almost certainly wouldn’t _let_ themselves be left behind.

It was a mess, but…

Marco supposed it could be an enjoyable mess. He’d have an excuse to take his time coming back, if he was shepherding a bunch of kids through Paradise and making sure that Ace the Angriest Kid in the World was, at least, not _randomly_ spiking his Haki and knocking people out (or worse) by sheer accident. He _might_ even be able to get Ace to calm down some.

He was rather more confident that he was going to talk the redhead into joining Whitebeard’s or Luffy’s crew, though, _without_ having to tell her why he wasn’t going to just leave her here.

**Author's Note:**

> This may get a sequel (or more) at some point. I really have no idea.
> 
> ~~~
> 
> Edit 03/09/2020: ...who am I kidding, it is getting sequels. Follow the series or me for 'em, they're likely to be one-shots of varying ratings.


End file.
